


What You're Worth

by GinnyBloomPotter



Series: What Siblings Do [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben is the Best Bro, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Klaus Hargreeves Deserves Better, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Pre-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Siblings, Vanya Hargreeves Deserves Better, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Vanya is the best sister, i think at least, just in that they are kids, prequel but can be a stand-alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 15:47:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18034550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GinnyBloomPotter/pseuds/GinnyBloomPotter
Summary: Number Four kept staying out all night. Number Seven was worried.





	What You're Worth

**Author's Note:**

> This is the prequel to "Soundproofed Mausoleums," but neither are necessary for understanding of the other. I just lingered on the thought that Vanya was uber-protective of Klaus as a kid and decided to expand on things mentioned in the other story. Basically the "Vanya was the best and deserved better" fic. Also the "Klaus is too precious for this world (or at least for Reginald's A+ Parenting)" fic.
> 
> This probably never happened in universe, but it totally could've, if you ignore how old Vanya actually was when she started violin.
> 
> Special thanks to someone-else-entirely.tumblr.com who proofread this for me and helped make it coherent after I banged this out in half an hour.

Number Four kept staying out all night. 

Number Seven didn’t know where he was going, only that Father would take him for “private training” right after dinner, night after night, and that he’d come back in the morning an hour before breakfast, dusty and dirty, shaking and shivering, skin frozen to the touch and eyes haunted and terrified. He’d shower, change, and be downstairs in time to eat with the others.

She knew Number Six had some idea what was happening, that she’d come to check on Four a few times, only to find him huddled next to Six on the couch in the library, dozing lightly as Six read to him, but she had no idea how to even begin to ask him what was happening to Number Four at night. (She knew he’d only tell her to askFour, and she knew Four would never tell her.)

She didn’t know what to do for him either. She wanted to help, to ease the bags under his eyes and make sure he never had to suffer through it again, but she couldn’t figure out what would make a difference.

So she decided to try and be there for him.

She started waking up early, enlisting Grace to help her make him mugs of hot chocolate that she’d bring up to his room just in time for him to get home. She (and Number Six, after the third time,) sat with him until the cocoa warmed him up some, patient and comforting as he shook and cried. 

When he whimpered at the screams of spirits she couldn’t see, she brought her violin into the rooms he hid in and practiced and practiced until and even after her neck started to hurt and her fingers went sore on the fingerboard and the bow stopped screeching across the strings and started singing instead. It took only a few minutes for Four to grow quiet and still and watch, entranced, as she struggled over the pieces Father chose for her, but she stayed with him for the entirety of his breaks between training sessions, keeping the ghosts at bay for as long as she could. 

When Six could no longer produce sound from a throat too sore to read anymore, she’d pick up the book instead, hugging her brothers close to her body as if she could protect them from the world with her arms and voice alone. 

And when Number Four came back one morning, trailing yards behind Father, mumbling brokenly about not wanting to go back to the mausoleum ever again, she decided enough was enough. 

From what she could gather from his whimpers, Seven determined that Father was bringing him to the old, nearby mausoleum every night and locking him in to be haunted by the spirits there. That would not do, she resolved. She remembered being locked in the basement when she got sick a few years ago, remembered screaming herself hoarse waiting for someone, anyone, to let her out. She would not let that happen to Number Four anymore, and she promised him as such, holding him close and staring him so intently in the eye that he had no choice but to believe her. 

That afternoon, after the daily cup of hot cocoa and her morning lessons and lunch, she left Number Six reading him to sleep in the library and interrupted Father in his study. 

“What do you want, Number Seven?” he asked impatiently, not even looking up from his journal. 

“I want you to stop locking Number Four in the mausoleum,” she said with more bravery than she felt. She was angrier than she had ever been before, and found herself reaching for strength she didn’t think existed. Something about her voice resonated with power though, and Father looked up with what she thought might be fear, before a coldness overtook his face and he regarded her with an eyebrow raised.

“Number Four has been given a great gift in being able to commune with the dead. It would do him good to overcome his fear of them.”

“He’s a child!” she burst out, ignoring her own age in her rage, and… there. Wasn’t that a flicker of fear in Father’s eyes once again? “He’s a child who has had ghosts and spirits shouting at him for longer than he’s understood the concept of death! You aren’t curing him of fear; you’re torturing him!”

His eyes narrowed. “Have you taken your medicine today, Seven?” he asked her, and she couldn’t understand what that had to do with the topic at hand. 

“Yes,” she spat, “but I don’t see how that matters.”

He looked marginally relieved at her response in a way she didn’t quite understand. 

“Does this really mean so much to you?”

“He’s my brother. He’s worth more to me than anything.”

“Anything?”

She did not like the dark intent to his question, but nodded determinedly nonetheless.

“More than your music?”

She nodded again, more hesitantly this time, not quite sure where he was going. 

“Very well, Number Seven. I will cease Number Four’s nighttime trainings, but understand this. This is not a gift. This is a trade, and it is a trade that will cost you dearly.”

“I will pay what I must.”

He nodded. “Place your left hand on the desk,” he ordered, and when she complied, he lifted a heavy glass paperweight from beside his papers and held it over her hand. “Remember, this will mean no practicing your violin until you heal. This is the price of your brother’s freedom. Are you certain you will accept these charges?”

He was going to break her hand, she realized with a start, so that she would no longer be able to press the strings and play. For a moment, she debated refusing to give up her one true joy, but she remembered the haunted look in Number Four’s eyes that morning as he pleaded with figures she couldn’t see not to send him back there, and her resolve strengthened once more. 

With a determination she had never felt before, she nodded grimly, closing her eyes and awaiting the blow. 

She had to admit, she didn’t think he’d truly go through with it. She thought he would, perhaps, see her resolution and argue that the intention was payment enough. But nevertheless, the paperweight came down forcefully over her fragile fingers and agony exploded up her arm. She could hardly hear herself scream with how much it hurt, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that the paperweight had shattered with what she assumed must have been the force behind the blow, glass embedding itself into both her now broken hand and his own, whole one. He looked more frightened than she’d seen him in a long time, but after several moments of intense eye contact he reassumed his cool, unaffected demeanor, and she brushed off the moments of weakness as him not knowing his own strength. 

Father called Grace into the room to provide medical attention, and once her hand had been cleaned, bandaged, and wrapped and the cuts on Father’s hand treated, he left the study for the library, Seven close on his heels. 

She could feel the triumph on her face, and beamed at Number Six behind Father’s back, prompting a concerned and confused look in return as he put aside the book and shook Four awake. 

“Number Four,” Father proclaimed. “I have decided your nighttime training sessions have reached a satisfactory level and are to cease, effective immediately.”

Without another word, he turned on the spot and, after sending a weighty glare in Seven’s direction, left the room.  

Four looked disbelievingly at his retreating figure, then hopefully, and then, when it became clear no one was about to jump out and laugh at him for falling for the trick, ecstatically at both Six and Seven. 

Six sent a meaningful look at the bandages on her hand as he accepted the exuberant hug from his brother, who was half jumping with the relief of freedom. Seven shook her head minutely before Six pulled her into the embrace. 

Four ran out of the room as soon as he broke away, shouting for Grace so he could inform her of the news, but Six refused to break his hold on Seven. 

“What did you do?” he demanded, pulling back just enough to look at her, and she dropped her eyes to her wrapped left hand. 

“It was a small price to pay,” she whispered to him, wincing as it twinged. “I never want him to hurt like that again. It’s not fair, and it’s not right, and-”

He interrupted her by pulling her back in for a tighter hug. “And you saved him,” he murmured in her ear. 

He smiled shyly as he let go. “Maybe that’s your superpower?”

He left her then, but the warmth in her heart lasted through the day, even as she put away her violin under her bed, knowing she wouldn’t see it again for weeks. And when Four came to wake her the next morning with a grin, a shy thank you, and a mug of hot chocolate, she knew it would last much, much longer. 

Even though it took over six weeks before she could play her violin again, as she and Six sat laughing during every morning break while Four insisted on playing it for her, bow shrieking shrilly across the strings, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that she had made the right decision. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided I love this universe so if anyone is interested in more, let me know!
> 
> Also, let me know what you think? Maybe? Please?


End file.
